This invention relates to apparatus and a method for transporting wafers and, in particular relates to apparatus and method for maintaining the center of the wafers at a known location.
In transporting semiconductor wafers, or any other article not having a regular geometrical shape or a shape symmetrical about any line through its center, a problem arises in accurately locating a wafer. In transporting a wafer to a plasma reactor, for example, it is important that the wafer be accurately placed within the reactor so that any treatment of the wafer is carried out as uniformly as possible. If the wafer is off-center in the reactor, the yield of good die per wafer decreases sometimes significantly.
One source of difficulty is the flat on the wafer which is used to indicate the crystallographic orientation of the wafer. As illustrated in FIG. 1, cassette 11 contains a plurality of wafers, such as wafer 13. Wafer 13 rests in the cassette with flat 14 facing away from the cassette. As thus positioned, center 15 of wafer 13 has the location indicated. Cassette 12 contains wafer 16. In this case, however, flat 17 of wafer 16 faces an interior portion of cassette 12, which results in center 18 being positioned as shown. A comparison of centers 15 and 18 reveals offset 19 between the location of the enters relative to the cassettes. On a four inch wafer, this offset can amount to as much as 2.3 millimeters. (While illustrated using separate cassettes, it is understood that this problem is also a variation in position of the wafers within a single cassette).
In the prior art, a variety of mechanisms have been employed to solve this problem. In general, they are directed at locating the flat and rotating the wafer to a predetermined orientation of the flat. These mechanisms are not only complex but they also tend to generate particles which could contaminate the wafer. An alternative has been to use a plurality of sensors and actuators to bring the wafer to a known location. This is also a complex mechanism.
In view of the foregoing, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide simplified apparatus for repeatably locating the center of a wafer.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for locating the center of a wafer on a transfer spatula.